


Take My Hand We'll Make It I Swear

by jynx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Cody is very patient, Dechipped Cody, Inadvertent Mirroring Anakin and Padme, M/M, Post-Order 66, Relationship Problems, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 01:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17458136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jynx/pseuds/jynx
Summary: Rex and Cody have some relationship issues to work out, and in the meantime, they need to decide what their next move is against the Empire.





	Take My Hand We'll Make It I Swear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> All my love to betas SL-Walker and Shadowmaat for holding my hand as I tweaked at them over a particularly thorny spot, and to ShaeTiaan for eyeballs and generally listening to me facepalm when I realized what Rex was doing to me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this! I haven't seen many Rex got Cody dechipped at the beginning fics, if any, so. :x Enjoy?

Rex looked up as Cody walked into the cockpit and dropped into the seat next to him. The other clone's skin was darker from his time spent on Tatooine and his normally black hair actually looked a shade lighter. There was stubble, but that was to be expected at this point, and his hair was a controlled riot of curls and cowlicks. It was endearing and adorable and made Rex want to shove his hands in the other's hair and mess him up even more. 

"What?" Cody asked, voice sounding rough. He had a canteen in one hand and was drinking steadily from it. Rex guessed there wasn't a lot of water to spare down there but honestly, the General should have at least _tried_ to take care of Cody while he was down there. 

"How's the General?" Rex asked, trying to keep his voice neutral as he looked down at the navcomp and tried to decide where they were going now that he had picked Cody up again. 

"Good," Cody said dryly. Rex had apparently failed at his neutrality. Oh, damn. How awful for him. "He says 'hi' and that you should come next time. There's a bottle of rum he found that you would like." 

"Two clones would be more obvious than one," Rex said, grabbing his datapad and calling up the latest Alliance Intelligence reports. Where would their two-man team do the most good? It was getting harder and harder to run just two-man ops. He had an idea but he was waiting to spring it on Cody. Now was not that time. 

"Plot a course for Alderaan," Cody said around yawn, his voice still so rough. He had emptied his water canteen and gone after Rex's, intent on soaking up as much water as possible. "We're playing errand boys for a bit. Besides, you know the Senator will have something waiting for us when we get there. He's good like that." 

Rex lowered the datapad and rolled his eyes, "Is he expecting us?" 

Cody emptied the second canteen and set it aside, his voice starting to even out from the rough growl that a desert planet had given him. "No, but Fulcrum is." Rex perked up at that. He hadn't seen Ahsoka in month. "Obi-Wan got a transmission from her just as I was leaving. And itwouldn't be obvious if we landed the ship out in the Wastes near him." 

Rex's fingers flew over the navcomp. "He's your Jedi," he said softly. "No need for me to see him." His Jedi had gone Dark and was the evil thing they were all fighting, though another one of his Jedi was the young woman they were about to go see. There was a small crate of her favorite caff in their hold and a parcel of gummy tookas he had grabbed when they'd been a little more flush because he thought she'd like them. She would never be too old that he couldn't spoil her. Her life had been hard enough--before the war at a Temple where she had almost aged out, then the war, and then what the Jedi had done to her. Everyone had turned on her, those she had trusted, and General Kenobi had been leading that charge. 

Cody sighed, swinging his feet up on the navcomp, sand sprinkling down among the instruments as it was knocked loose. "Rex, he doesn't blame you," Cody said. "No one blames you. Hellfires, you saved me or I'd be another meat clanker out there--" 

"That's not what this is about," Rex said, spinning up the hyperspace drive once they were in the right lane. He tried to ignore the sand. He'd probably clean it up later just so he didn't have to see it and hear the phantom voice bitching in the back of his mind about how it got everywhere. 

He remembered fighting with Cody--it felt like years ago--about the kriffing chip. After Fives had-- had died and all the evidence just "disappeared," Rex had gone to Kix with blood still on his armor. Scared the crap out of his medic but he'd hauled him and Jesse to the closest medbay--the 104th's, a shocked Wolffe trailing after them and so full of outraged words--and they'd found the chip in Rex's head. He'd made Kix cut it out and Wolffe and Jesse had demanded the same. Rex had talked to Cody over comms, their high level officer encryptions coming in handy for once, begging him to see Sawbones or Gomer, any of the medics currently attached to the 7th Sky Corps. 

Cody had told him he was just stressed, that he needed to stop raving or else he'd be decommissioned. Rex had been so hurt; here he was trying to save his _riduur's_ life and Cody was being uncooperative. Cody had threatened to relieve him of command if he didn't stop raving. They hadn't ever fought as viciously as they had that night, except for what had come next. The next time 7th Sky had docked, Rex had made sure he was waiting. Cody had been exasperated, going on about reports and looking just as exhausted as General Kenobi always did, but Rex didn't give him a chance. He had swiped a strong sedative from Kix's kit and used it on Cody, dragging the other to the 501st's berth and demanding Kix remove the chip. 

Cody had woken and, once he realized what had happened, had left without a word to Rex. Within hours Rex had been reassigned to a squad of clones headed to mop up the Mandalore mess, where he met up with Ahsoka, but he knew it was Cody's quiet condemnation and warning. He had been relieved of his command, demoted in a sense down to a squad from his legion, because he had broken Cody's trust. General Kenobi had sent him a note with his orders-- _Give him time_ \--but none of them had time. Less than a month later Order 66 went live and Rex and the others he had managed to dechip were smuggling Ahsoka to safety. 

He never got the full story of General Kenobi's survival from Cody, and likely never would. The two of them had apparently been picked up by Senator Organa and the General had left Cody with the Senator while he went off and did--well. Cody called them _Jedi Things_. Rex called it _Not Doing His Karking Job_. Cody had remained staunchly supportive of Kenobi, no matter what boneheaded decisions he made--and he was making a lot of them this time around--and it drove Rex crazy. 

Rex and Cody fought a lot lately. 

Rex loved Cody so much it hurt sometimes, but he refused to let the other's blind loyalty destroy either of them. Rex wasn't sure if they could trust Kenobi anymore, not really, and that was a problem. Senator Amidala had died and General Kenobi had agreed to separate her _ade_. You didn't break up a pair like that, even the trainers knew that. Sometimes a _vod_ just went a little wrong without his other half there and then they both got decommissioned. And Luke wasn't even with Kenobi! He was off with some other baselines. 

He needed to be with family. His vod'e. 

Cody hadn't even laid eyes on the kid. They just had to trust General Kenobi's word and even Cody had to admit Kenobi had gone a little crazy since the Purges. That's why Cody checked on him whenever he could; Cody was worried the man would just walk into the desert one day and never come back. 

Rex wasn't sure that wasn't a bad thing. 

Cody sighed. "He found Gregor," he said. "Remember him?" 

Rex stared at him, stunned. "What?" 

"Obi-Wan sent him off to another cell once he'd been fixed up. Gregor's chip had already been a mangled mess because of all the hits he'd taken to the head and the explosions he'd been caught in," Cody said, slouching down in his seat as he unhooked the belt he'd been wearing on planet. It had different weapons than he usually carried as well as tools specific to Tatooine and its heat and sand. He dropped it off to the side and stretched his arms and legs, his back cracking. Rex itched to get Cody under him so he could work that tension out a better way. "He's not going on so man--" 

"I don't want to hear it," Rex said, pushing them into hyperspace. He knew what Cody was going to say, it wasn't anything he hadn't said before, and this wasn't a hill either of them wanted to die on. 

Cody was quiet for a moment before he spoke up: "What are you more angry about? That he didn't kill Skywalker? That you weren't there to try to stop your Jedi from going insane? That nothing was good enough for him? We both know Skywalker had his issues--" 

"Wonder who gave them to him," Rex said, voice low. Apparently they were going to have this fight after all. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to set course and feed Cody, maybe spend the next five days taking care of each other and remembering why they were married in the first place. There had been an awful lot of cold nights lately and Rex missed the warmth they had always shared, both physically and emotionally. 

Where was Cody's loyalty to him? He could so easily give it to a Jedi who wasn't even here but Rex got nothing but those condescendingly patient looks and diverted conversations. He wasn't a bomb to be defused, he just needed Cody to _understand_. 

Cody fell quiet again, they both were silent as the pyre, as the stars streaked by. "I know you feel like you failed, Rex, but you didn't," he said softly as he got to his feet. He leaned down and kissed the top of Rex's head. "I wish you could see that. You saved Ahsoka, you saved me and as many of our brothers as you could, you kept me from murdering my General. You found me in the Alliance and we're doing good work. I wish I could help you lay down your burden, _c'yare_ , but you won't let me." 

Rex slumped forward and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "How is this all so simple for you?" he demanded. 

"I talk to my Jedi," Cody said, laying a warm hand on Rex's head. "I let him talk to me. You'd be surprised the number of crazy ideas I've had to talk Obi-Wan out of. He's not the enemy here. He's hurting just as much as you over Skywalker, more even, for all the reasons you're so ready to condemn him. He has holes in his life he wants to fill too." 

Rex grabbed Cody's hand and squeezed his fingers, not wanting to let him go just yet. "I think we need a bigger crew," he said finally. Kriff it, he needed to change the subject and now was as good of a time as ever. "Maybe Wolffe and--" 

"Wolffe is running the Wolfpack with Plo," Cody said, leaning against his seat as he held Rex's hand. "You take Wolffe in, you take them all, and then we'd need a bigger ship." 

Rex shook his head. "We have a good ship. It's small and fast, even with your fighter attached. We outrun the Destroyers easily. I was thinking that maybe we should try getting more brothers out." 

"We'd need a medic," Cody said, not dismissing the idea entirely out of hand. That was a good sign. "Someone to get the chips out. I've lost track of Kix, but he and Jesse would be good choices." 

"We could just free them and transport--" 

"No," Cody said, voice sharp and firm, reminding Rex of how Cody had been as a Commander. He had relaxed, easing off the old aspects of GAR life until one could almost call Cody easy-going these days, but that didn't mean he'd lost his edge. "We get them and we dechip them. We don't let our brothers suffer any longer than they already have." 

Rex nodded, chewing on his lip. "We'd need an actual squad, more than just the two of us." 

"We'd need an operation," Cody said. He squeezed Rex's hand with a sad look. "We could use a Force-user." 

"No," Rex said, pulling his hand free and getting to his feet. He knew exactly where this conversation was heading and he wanted nothing to do with it. He refused to go down to see Kenobi on planet and now Cody wanted to trap them on a small ship with no where to go for privacy? The heat of Tatooine had baked Cody's brain too much. 

"Of all the stubborn idiots in the Galaxy, why did I end up with _two_ of you?" Cody sighed as Rex walked away. 

= 

Rex woke slightly when Cody came to bed later. He pulled the other clone close and nuzzled his hair. The wildness had been tamed slightly, just a bit on the sides and back and leaving the curls and licks to flourish on top, and Rex smiled sleepily as he worked his fingers into Cody's hair and _ruffled_. 

Cody chuckled and kissed him. "Fool." 

"Fluffy," Rex hummed and pulled him close. "Wild." A pause. "Smell good." 

"Go back to sleep," Cody said, kissing his cheek as he twined closer around Rex. 

Rex's nose itched and he sneezed, nuzzling against Cody's neck. "Miss you," he sighed. 

"If you'd stop being so angry we could spend our time together doing better things than arguing," Cody said, rubbing at the base of Rex's neck gently. Rex didn't want gentle. He kind of wanted to have some fun, pin Cody down and see what kind of noises he could wring out of him. He mouthed at the skin under his lips and slid a hand down, only to have his wrist grabbed halfway down. "Not tonight. Tomorrow. I'm still mad at you." 

"Kote," Rex sighed, using Cody's real name and not the Basic bastardization some Jedi had put down in a rush when they had first been activated. It was their name, together, meant for nights like these--except when someone was being a pain about it. 

"Don't you dare," Cody said, starting to pull away. Rex followed, clinging, not wanting Cody to leave. He babbled apologies as he began to wake up, desperate to go back to even just a few moments before. Cody finally settled back down on their bunk, stiff with anger. "I don't know what's gotten into you but it needs to get _out_ of you. I'm mad at you, I have a right to be mad. I don't want to have sex with you when I'm mad. Life has stopped being a series of 'if we don't now it may never happen' moments and I will be damned if I am going to go back to that. Don't make me go back to that." 

Rex held onto him, trying to calm himself down. "I can't lose you," he said. 

"Fool," Cody said. "The only way you're going to lose me is by holding me too tight, or by being so much of an asshole I either space you or leave you stranded planet-side." 

Rex didn't want to consider any of those options. "I'm sorry," he said, feeling as hollow as his voice sounded. "I don't." 

Cody huffed and made those noises of his that meant he was aggravated and didn't feel like words. His hands were gentle as he moved them both around to lay on the bed, both awake and running on microbursts of adrenaline. Rex pressed small, quick kisses along whatever bits of skin he could reach. 

"You'll see Ahsoka soon," Cody said quietly. "I know seeing her makes you calmer. Maybe she'll have some thoughts on our plan." Rex nodded, trying to ease his grip on Cody as the other yawned and pressed his face into the pillow. "Get some rest, love." 

Rex cuddled in closer to Cody and listened to the other's breathing even out slowly before he himself dropped off. 

= 

The next morning was awkward with Rex wanting to apologize and make up the whole situation and Cody just brushing him off. A mug of caff pressed into his hand, fixed just the way he liked, breakfast fixed and waiting, everything perfectly and painfully normal. He was aware enough to know he was being _handled_ and he hated it. 

"Drink your caff," Cody said, settling into his spot at the table. "We have to talk about something." 

Rex choked on the sip he had just taken and set his caff down, trying to breathe passed the lump in his throat and the feeling of being plunged into an icy lake. No, Cody couldn't leave him. It had been one mistake, admittedly in a mass of other smaller infractions, but still! They couldn't be that far gone. Cody was watching him with a calm look on his face as he sipped his own caff, ignoring Rex's obvious panic, steady in a way that made him such an excellent sniper and Commander. It's why he ran the guns on their small ship and Rex flew--Cody was the one who kept them safe. 

"Are you finished yet?" Cody asked after a few moments of silence had passed. 

"Am I--?" 

"Panicking," Cody clarified. 

Rex picked his caff up and took a sip. Kriff him. He had a right to panic. 

"I have a theory and I need you to tell me if I'm right," Cody said, picking his mug up only to set it back down. Rex blinked, startled, realizing that his _riduur_ was nervous. "I don't know many of the 501st who shacked up like the 212th did. Most of them traded about like sex was going out of style, but Waxer and Boil said the _riduurok_ and maybe two others I can think of. Kix had Jesse, but they kept quiet. _All_ of the 501st kept quiet. Why?" 

Rex stared at him. "Because we had to?" he said slowly. 

What was Cody talking about? If the Jedi had found out about the clones and their attachments to their brothers, that some of them had been more than brothers to each other, it would have been straight back to Kamino for them. He remembered the look of fear on Fives's and Echo's faces when the General had caught them kissing after a battle, the look of shock on General Skywalker's face and _pity_. There'd been tricks and tips that General Skywalker had suggested and spread around to them, through Rex and a few other Captains, to help the men keep such things quiet and out of the Council's eye--away from Kenobi's eye. 

Cody frowned, tapping a finger against his mug. "Obi-Wan's been in a relationship of his own, committed, with certain persons I'm not naming, since he was a Commander," he said. Rex set his mug down with a thump, some caff spilling out to land on his hand from the force, and stared at him. No way. That was impossible. "The three of them weren't often all on the cruiser but the amount of time I had to listen to my General--you remember him, right? The one who liked throwing himself in front of tanks for a laugh?--complain that his lovers were taking too many risks were beyond counting. Then there were the times they were all on board and no one got any sleep." 

Rex stared at him. "Are you…?" 

Cody arched an eyebrow, the hint of a smile on his face. "There was a reason Obi-Wan wore his collar so high." 

Rex shook his head, "No, that's. That's not possible. General Skywalker--" 

"You do realize those two never actually talked about anything that mattered," Cody said slowly, his words careful in a way that made Rex want to punch him. "You were there during those not-fights of theirs. Obi-Wan would say one thing and Skywalker would hear something completely different." 

"That's not that hard to understand," Rex said with a bitterness he felt to his bones. He picked his mug up again and took a deep drink of the caff, not caring the way it scorched its way down his throat. He preferred it to thinking about what Cody was saying. "Kenobi never said what he meant. He'd say one thing and it'd mean three different things." 

"That's General Skywalker talking, not you," Cody said, eyes on his caff. "You know as well as I do that Obi-Wan was never anything but straightforward with us, unless it involved his own health. Anything Skywalker said to you you should be suspect of since we know, for a fact, that the Emperor had been going after him since he was _nine_. That's a long, long time for a birthborn, Rex. I'm going to tell you the same thing I've been trying to get Obi-Wan to understand--Skywalker never had a chance." 

"You don't know that," Rex said with a quiet viciousness. He ached for his General, for the man he would have gladly died for if not with. What happened to him was a tragedy and it was the Jedi's fault. Why couldn't Cody see this? 

"You can't carry water in a broken bucket," Cody said quietly. 

Rex waited for Cody to say more but the other clone just shook his head and drank his caff in silence. Rex had known Cody long enough to know that he was almost as infuriating as Kenobi when he wanted to be, saying one thing and meaning another. That broken bucket comment meant more than what Cody had just said. 

"So, what, you think because Kenobi was able to have some mythical relationship--" 

"Not that mythical," Cody said with a roll of his eyes. "Just because you don't want to believe something exists doesn't mean it stops being real." 

"Is this another one of those 'if a tree falls in a forest does anyone hear it' mindbenders you and Alpha kept at each other with?" Rex demanded. "I don't need my brain hurting more than it does already, _vod_." 

Cody's lips twitched. "A door is closed with two Jedi behind it. There is a mysterious noise that sound suspiciously like moaning. They are Jedi, ergo they do not have sex. However, those are definitely sex noises. Discuss." 

"I hate you," Rex sighed, getting up to get another cup of caff. He snagged Cody's mug on the way with a shake of his head. He took the time to fix both mugs the way they liked it, feeling a little more relaxed than he had earlier. "We're good, aren't we?" he asked as he handed Cody his mug and sat down. 

"Good?" Cody asked with an arched brow. 

A spike of fear down his spine. "Yes, good. You're not, I don't know, going to go running off to join another cell of the Alliance and leave--" 

"You are an unimaginable idiot, CT-7567," Cody said as he got to his feet. Rex felt himself flinch at his digits but watched as Cody walked off to one end of their tiny eat-in kitchen area and then to the other, pacing back and forth in clear agitation with his arms crossed over his chest. "The two of us, alone, knocking about like we do on this ship is bad for us. Maybe it was what we needed at the beginning to figure out where our pieces fit but now we're just finding where we grate on each other." 

Rex didn't like the sound of that. Sure, they had been fighting an awful lot but all couples fought. Right? 

"I need space, you need space, it's a fact neither of us considered when we started this," Cody said. "No _vod_ did well when they had to live lockstep with their squad for too long. We depend on each other, all of us, but we need a bigger group to bounce off of. Two does not a group make." 

"Is that why you agreed with my plan?" Rex asked, suspicious. 

"I want my clan back," Cody said with a shrug. "I want my annoying Jedi and your pint-size Jedi and if my Jedi had to come with his _loud_ Jedi lovers then I can live with that. All he's doing now is sulking on a desert planet being useless and feeling sorry for himself. We can be Fulcrum's mobile base, which I know for a fact is something she needs. I've heard her and Command bitch about it often enough. I want to steal back as many of Ghost Company, if not the 212th, as possible. I want to steal Torrent for you, if not all of the 501st--but that might be more dangerous considering who their General was." 

Rex hadn't considered that and he drank his caf feeling awful for forgetting. How many of his men were still alive? How many of them had realized what they had done in a moment of chip malfunction and eaten a blaster? How many of them had Vader simply gotten rid of because they were "defective", no better than the Kaminoans now? He hated these thoughts. 

"We can find Kix and he can be our medic until we pick up some others, and we'll have Jesse for more of the grunt work," Cody said. "Our crew can grow as we rescue more and more brothers. Maybe, eventually, we can capture back a destroyer of our very own and have a home again. Some place for all those we rescue to live, to recover. We can have a proper clan home." 

"You mad bastard," Rex said, setting his caff down. "You think we can pull it off?" 

"You think Obi-Wan was the only one coming up with insane plans?" Cody asked with a smug look. "I think we have issues we need to work out," Rex felt his heart sink, "but having a goal and a mission will help. Not just our brothers, but us as well." 

Rex felt his joy at the plan and thoughts of who they could save slowly spin out into nothingness at the thought of his own personal issues. They had so many. He slumped back in his seat and felt his shoulders slump. His General had kept them safe, hadn't he? It wasn't… 

A hand on his knee and a whiskery kiss was pressed to his cheek. "Talk to Ahsoka, to Obi-Wan. They knew Skywalker just as well as you did. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm right. But I do know that we can't keep poisoning each other like this. I'm not going to give up seeing my General. I'd really like to save him from the insanity that comes with having no one but banthas to talk to." 

Rex blinked. "Banthas." 

"Banthas," Cody confirmed with a grin wide enough to pull at his scar. 

Rex sighed. "By all means, we have to save the General from the banthas." 

**Author's Note:**

> So, who Obi-Wan had a relationship with isn't really important? If you want to know, you can ask and I'll let you know. ^^;; but that's kind of author headcanon. You can also ignore it!


End file.
